In January I attended the Sundance film festival, where the most buzzed-about movie was the unconventional drama Sorry to Bother You. It captivated audiences not just because it boasts a cast filled with talented actors of color (including Tessa Thompson, LaKeith Stanfield and Steven Yeun). It’s also because it dared to paint outside the lines of what has often been presented to us as the obligatory black narrative weighted by themes of trauma and violence. That’s not to diminish those two things: they are part of the historical fabric. But a black movie that shows ordinary black people in an extraordinary story is also worth celebrating.

Sorry to Bother You, black Americans and the power and peril of code-switching | AT McWilliams

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So it should come as no surprise that Sundance, which will reopen in Park City, Utah, in January, will continue to move in this direction: highlighting diverse storytelling featuring people of color that challenges the status quo. What I especially love about Sundance’s vast feature-film slate – 112 titles in total and 40 that were directed by people of color – is that it underscores a common theme of humanity.

Even something that seems cold and dark, like the prison drama Clemency, starring Alfre Woodard and directed by Chinonye Chukwu, centers less on the brutality and more on the psychological and emotional toll it takes on a female prison warden who’s seen one too many death row executions – and the human connection she so desperately needs.

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The same can be said for The Farewell, directed by Lulu Wang, in which Awkwafina (who’s also premiering Paradise Hills at the festival) plays a woman who returns to China from the US to stage an impromptu wedding, so she can see her terminally ill grandmother happy one last time. There’s also the writer/director Minhal Baig’s Hala, about a Muslim teen (Geraldine Viswanathan) coming into her own as she deals with her unraveling family. These characters, even in the midst of devastation, still embody a universal sense of hope, love and longing.

I am also really excited to see Native Son. The fact that it stars two Barry Jenkins alums – Kiki Layne (If Beale Street Could Talk) and Ashton Sanders (Moonlight) – means I must watch it. Add to that, it’s inspired by the seminal Richard Wright novel of the same name (adapted by Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Suzan Lori-Parks), which will hopefully help usher in more adaptations of black novels that capture a slice of black life unlike any other medium. Speaking of illuminating marginalized characters, Justin Chon, who directed last year’s underrated Gook, is back with Ms Purple, starring Tiffany Chu as a young Korean American woman who reconnects with her estranged brother as their father faces death.

Because their humanity has historically been dismissed on screen, it deserves to be recognized as a step forward

It may seem reductive to praise the existence of films that highlight minority characters simply living their lives while facing adversity not very unlike anyone else’s. But because their humanity has historically been dismissed on screen, it deserves to be recognized as a step forward – despite how basic it is. So when someone like Rashad Ernesto Green, who directed 2011’s indie favorite Gun Hill Road, presents the story of young love in a gentrifying Harlem in Premature, it’s meaningful. The same is true for the workplace comedy Late Night, starring and co-written by Mindy Kaling, which pokes fun at the homogeneity of late-night TV hosts with its storyline about two acerbically hilarious yet extremely different women united only by their love of a great punchline.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the big-name talent challenging the mainstream in some of the most intriguing genre-defying movies on the slate – Lupita Nyong’o, Kiersey Clemons and David Oyelowo. Nyong’o plays a kindergarten teacher trying to save her young students from a zombie apocalypse in Little Monsters. In Sweetheart, Clemons plays a woman facing off against a malevolent force alone on a small island. Relive assembles an all-star cast including Oyelowo, Storm Reid, Mykelti Williamson, Alfred Molina and Brian Tyree Henry for a moving ghost story drama.

These are just highlights from the plethora of Sundance offerings. Some may consider them “just movies”, but for audiences who simply desire to see more diverse storytelling featuring talent of color, this list is affirmation that they’re being heard and that these stories are as important as any others.